


going going gone

by starlight_sugar



Category: Neoscum (Podcast)
Genre: Airports, Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 12:26:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16994985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlight_sugar/pseuds/starlight_sugar
Summary: All flights in and out of Indianapolis are grounded indefinitely. We apologize for the inconvenience. (An airport travel AU.)





	going going gone

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of the AUcember series, a self-made challenge where I try to write a new AU one-shot every day. You can read all of the AUcember fics in the collection linked above.
> 
> All my gratitude and love to Tam, who helped me work out the details.

It takes Pox twelve minutes after the airport closes down to decide that she needs coffee to get through this.

She’s been a flight attendant for - well, not that long, actually, but part of the appeal of it is that she’s always on her way somewhere. She likes airports: all the people going home or going to work or going away, all the people coming somewhere new. She likes that she’s in motion. A lot of the flights she works are the Indy-to-Chicago loop, a constant back-and-forth, and she appreciates the rhythm.

And now she’s grounded. Just until the blizzard passes, but it’s still enough to make her antsy.

So Pox says something to the head flight attendant - not a crew she normally works with, so she’s not bothering to learn names - and sets off towards the nearest Starbucks. It’s the Indy airport, so there aren’t terribly many coffee shops, but the one she finds appears to be in a lull.

She makes sure to straighten her flight attendant ascot - very formal, very fancy, very much trying to make sure they don’t spit in her drink or anything because she’ll see them again - as she flounces up to the counter. “Hello!”

“Hi,” says the dead-eyed woman behind the counter. She’s very tall.

“You’re very tall,” Pox says. “Can you make me a quad-shot venti caramel frappuccino with extra whipped cream and also an extra shot?”

The barista doesn’t even blink. “Sure.”

“Thank you,” Pox chirps, and pays, and gets her drink, and it’s all so, so boring. Why couldn’t she be snowed in O’Hare? At least there are a lot of people there. Here in Indianapolis it’s so slow and  _ boring. _ There’s only one guy at the closest gate, and he looks like he’s crying or something.

Pox frowns. Wait. That’s not a good thing.

“Excuse me,” she says, “could I order a couple of cookies as well? Oh, and cake pops.”

“A couple of each?”

“That’s right, two chocolate chip and-” she screws up her face, trying to do the math. It’d be strange to just give someone one cake pop, right? “Four birthday cake cake pops. Unless you have something with caramel on it.”

“We don’t.”

Pox waves her off and smacks her debit card on the counter. “Two cookies and four pops, please!”

The barista gives her a flat look, but she gives Pox all the pastries she ordered, which is very kind of her. She makes sure to drop a couple of dollars in the tip jar, and then grab a fistful of napkins, before making her way over to the gate.

The crying guy doesn’t look up until Pox plops down across from him, tucking her feet underneath her in the awkward little airplane chair. As soon as he notices her uniform, his eyes widen, and he starts scrubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. “I, uh- god, don’t mind me, I just- I was-”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Pox says, startled. “Airports are stressful! Only a crazy person would spend all their time in airports.”

The guy stares. She winks. He stares a little more and opens his mouth, then closes it, seeming content to just stare.

Pox winks again, for good measure, and holds out one of the cookies, with one of the cake pops in the package. “Here. Sugar helps.”

He looks down at the package, and his mouth opens into an O. “No, I can’t-”

“I already paid,” Pox says, a little petulantly. “I can eat them by myself, but it seemed-”

“No, it-”

“It looks like we had the same idea,” says a new voice. Pox looks up as a new man sits next to her: leather jacket, undercut, giant bag of chips. He kicks his feet up onto the chair across from him, right next to the crying man. “I told him I was gonna get snacks, so great minds-”

“And I was going to get drinks!” a voice says from behind Pox. She turns around, and a man with a trucker cap climbs over the fucking chair to squat in the chair next to Pox. “Look at us, a bunch of masterminds.”

“It’s almost like we coordinated,” Undercut agrees. “We didn’t, but we got a pretty well-rounded meal.”

“No entrees,” Trucker Cap points out. If Pox looks a little closer, his hat definitely says something about Jimmy Carter, but it’s almost faded beyond the point of being readable.

She looks back at Crying Guy expectantly. Except he’s not crying anymore, just sort of staring at the three of them with naked confusion. He has a kind face, Pox decides. A little scruffy, but not like he’s losing control of his facial hair situation, just like it’s been a minute since he remembered he has a facial hair situation.

“We don’t need entrees,” Pox decides. “We have the three major food groups: water, crisps, and ch-”

“Crisps?” repeats Trucker Cap. “I didn’t realize you were the fucking queen, otherwise I would’ve gone for real water.”

Sort Of Beard looks fascinated despite himself. “What kind of water do you have?”

“Knockoff water.” Trucker Cap reaches behind him to the row of chairs back-to-back with their row and picks up one of those foam to-go trays that they have at coffee shops, with a couple of plastic cups in it. “I didn’t bring enough for everyone.”

Undercut reaches into his bag and pulls out a water bottle. “I’m good.”

“I am too,” Sort Of Beard admits, looking sheepish. He reaches into his own backpack and comes up with a travel water bottle. “And I have snacks already. I was just-”

“Do you want company?” Pox asks, as kindly as possible. It’s one part because she wants to give him an out, if three strangers converging on him to give him food is overwhelming, but it’s partly because she desperately needs people to talk to. Maybe if Sort Of Beard says no she can talk to Undercut or Trucker, but this one seems like he could really use people. “You can have my baked goods if you want them, even if you don’t want to talk to people.”

“No, I-” Sort Of Beard lets out a long exhale. “It’s family shit, it’s - it’s nothing that I feel like I have to dump on a stranger. But I wouldn’t mind people to talk to.”

“Then it’s settled!” Trucker Cap somehow, disconcertingly, gets his feet out from under him so he’s no longer perched on the chair in a crouch, just sitting sprawled out. “My name is Daaaak Rambo, and I drive trucks. What about you?”

“I don’t drive trucks,” Sort Of Beard says, and then immediately flushes red. “I mean- shit, you were probably asking about my name.”

“If you’ve got one,” Dak Rambo the actual trucker says, not looking at all like he’s laughing at the guy. “Or if you want to share.”

“Tech Wizard.” He wipes the last couple of tears out of his beard and leans forward, elbows on knees. “I’m, uh, on a public access kids show in Chicago.”

Pox gasps. “Are you going to be late to work?”

“I don’t fucking care about work,” he mutters, which is unexpected, to say the least. “I was on my way to visit my nana, after dealing with some stuff here, and now I’m going to miss her.”

“Oh.” Pox drops the cookie in his lap, and then claps her hands over her heart. “I’m sorry, Tech.”

“It’s-” he takes a deep breath. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Pox agrees sadly. “Well, my name is Pox, and I’m a flight attendant here, so if you need alcohol to get through this, I can do that for you.”

“That’s probably not a good idea.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you have cookies. And a cake pop.”

“And chips,” adds Undercut. “My name’s Zenith, by the way. My friends call me Z. I’m mostly just here because you looked like you were bummed out, and like you could maybe use another human in the vicinity.”

“Great minds think alike,” Pox offers. “I can keep an ear out for if anyone’s talking about flights to Peoria! I know sometimes it’s different with the little airports-”

Tech shakes his head. “I’m connecting through Chicago, and that’s grounded.”

“You’re going to Chicago?” Pox says. It takes her a second to realize that she heard it in stereo: by the sound of it, both Dak and Zenith said the same thing. “Are we all going to Chicago?”

“I think we are,” Z says. “That’s crazy, what are the odds of that?”

“One in a million!” Dak stretches his legs out so his body is angled away from Pox, taking up at least two more chairs in the process. Pox doesn’t know if she should be impressed or horrified; these airport chairs are extremely uncomfortable. “Got a bunch of Chi-town boys here!”

“I can give you so many free snacks on the plane,” Pox says delightedly. “All of you!”

“What if we don’t want snacks?” Z asks.

Pox frowns at him. “I can spoil you in other ways, don’t you question that.”

“Like what?”

“Extra free earplugs, comping those little TVs in the back of your seats-”

“Our plane has those?” Dak whistles lowly. “Fancy. What about booze or sleep meds?”

“What, are you afraid of flying?”

“Ha! Dak Rambo isn’t afraid of any-”

“The typical cruising altitude of a commercial airplane is around 35,000 feet,” Z says. Dak audibly gulps. “Not afraid?”

“Not afraid,” Dak insists. “I just like it when I’m on the ground. And so are all eighteen wheels of my vehicle.”

“I don’t love flying either,” Tech Wizard admits. He looks a little embarrassed as he says it, like he’s admitting some deep, grave secret, but his eyes flick up to meet Dak’s.

Dak reaches a hand out to pat Tech’s knee. At least, Pox is assuming the intent, because he ends up slapping the knee with all the strength of a wet fish. “We’ll be on the plane together.”

“Yeah,” Tech says, looking pleased. “All of us will.”

Pox sits back, satisfied, and takes a long slurp of her coffee. “I really can get us good snacks, if we want them.”

“But you guys already went to so much effort to get me these.” Tech pokes at the Starbucks cookie in his lap. “And the chips.”

“And the water,” Dak adds. “Or at least, we had the water.”

Pox looks down. The tray of water is sideways on the floor. It looks like both of the cups of water are soaking into the carpet.

“At least the rest of us have water,” she decides. “And we can be here until one of us has to go.” Probably her, because of work, but she’ll at least make sure she says goodbye. “If you want us to stay.”

“I do,” Tech says. Pox smiles at him, and he smiles back. It’s sweet, the way he smiles. She likes it a lot. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Pox says, and slurps her coffee again. “Tell us about your job, Tech. We’re listening.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on Tumblr and Twitter @waveridden!


End file.
